https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgq0gy82wjo Gaza now worse than hell on earth, humanitarian chief tells BBC 2 hours ago Today "We have no security even for our own staff… they are working 20 hours a day. They are exhausting themselves. But it's too much, it's surpassing human capabilities." The ICRC said that in just a few hours on Tuesday morning its Rafah surgical teams received 184 patients, including 19 people dead on arrival and eight others who died of their wounds shortly afterwards. It was the highest number of casualties from a single incident at the field hospital since it was established just over a year ago. It happened around dawn on Tuesday. Palestinian witnesses and ICRC medics reported terrible scenes of killing as Israeli troops opened fire on Palestinians who were converging on the new aid distribution site in southern Gaza. It was "total carnage" according to a foreign witness." I believe the Red Cross' take and MSF's too.
I also believe this surgeon. Set to play, he discusses pulling M-16 bullets out of patients and how patients said they were fired on by soldiers in tanks.
I looked him up earlier, he is a UK surgeon, seems he did a little stint in Johannesburg where he likely saw some gunshots but was probably it. https://uk.linkedin.com/in/goher-rahbour-09657887
Understanding Hasbara: Israel's propaganda machine With disinformation all over social media and Israel using its considerable resources to get its narrative out, The New Arab looks into the form of Israeli propaganda known as 'Hasbara'. November, 2023 https://www.newarab.com/news/understanding-hasbara-israels-propaganda-machine Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari uses carefully crafted infographics to present Israel's narrative on its war policies [Getty] Since Israel began its war on Gaza on October 7, attempts to discern the veracity of many of the claims it made about its conduct in the war have been difficult. One of the main reasons for this is that Israel uses a propaganda function known in Hebrew as "Hasbara" in an attempt to control, shape and distort the narrative of every face of its actions. What is Hasbara? The word Hasbara roughly translates to "explaining" in English and was popularised in the early 20th century by the Polish Zionist activist and journalist Nahum Sokolow. Hasbara shares much in common with other forms of modern propaganda, but it is often considered a description of the more granular, event-by-event distortions and fabrications utilised by the Israeli state to justify its controversial actions and policies. In the modern era, it often takes the form of videos, infographics and viral social media posts and hashtags released and promoted by the Israeli state. Justifying the unjustifiable In both previous and current Israeli military attacks on Gaza, there have always been excessive civilian deaths and Israel repeatedly targets civilian neighbourhoods and infrastructure. One of the functions of Hasbara is to justify the targeting of civilian areas and the consequent civilian deaths, as well as to shift blame for large numbers of civilian deaths from Israel to Hamas. This is one reason why Israel continually accuses Hamas of using schools, hospitals, neighbourhoods and factories as military areas and of using Palestinian civilians as so-called "human shields". Israel has churned out satellite photos and excerpts of the "confessions" of alleged Hamas detainees to back these claims up, yet none of the evidence is independently verifiable. Critics argue that this isn't meant to be presented to third parties for scrutiny, but is rather hasbara in the form of weaponised disinformation to fight back against public outrage over perceived Israeli brutality. In the current attack on Gaza, Israel has taken the "human shields" justification one step further. By issuing mass evacuation orders for every resident of North Gaza, Israel's Hasbara narrative would have you believe it is trying to prevent human shields and civilian deaths. However, some analysts have argued that issuing such an unrealistic and unworkable mass evacuation order has given Israel the green light to attack civilians, as it can whitewash such attacks by saying it warned civilians to flee. This, according to analysts, is why Israel's attack on civilian areas has been so ferocious. Manufacturing Goliath One of the key functions of modern Hasbara is to depict Israel as the victim and even the underdog. To paraphrase Sokolow, who was writing in very different times when Europe was awash with antisemitism, this is appealing to the biblical narrative of David Vs Goliath – the smaller, weaker underdog battling and overcoming the stronger foe. Critics have noted that while this instance of Hasbara was a more believable narrative during a conflict like the 1967 Arab-Israel war, it is plainly absurd when used against Israel’s modern wars on Gaza. Israel is a nuclear-armed regional superpower with huge support from the US and Europe. It imposes a siege on Gaza, controlling its water supply, airspace and borders. Yet still Israel persists with the idea that Hamas and Gaza pose a threat to its existence - Israeli officials, including Benjamin Netanyahu, have even drawn direct parallels between Hamas, and sometimes all of Gaza in its current form, and Nazi Germany. This Hasbara distortion very deliberately confuses the direct motivations of Hamas and other forms of Palestinian resistance. But it’s also supposed to depict Hamas as being somehow as militarily capable as the Nazi war machine. For example, prior to their recent capture of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, Israel went out of its way to depict the medical facility as what it called a Hamas “command and control centre”, from which Hamas allegedly plans its activities. There’s no doubt that Hamas has bases, though there is no evidence that it has any kind of base at Al-Shifa, the very designation of such bases as “command and control centres” is a deliberately exaggerated distortion. If Israel can make you believe Hamas has something as sophisticated sounding as “command and control centres”, you might think Hamas has advanced military capabilities which means it has some level of parity with Israel. The Hasbara terminology is supposed to make people believe Israel is fighting a war for its national survival that also, in turn, justifies the ferocity of Israel’s military attacks on Gaza. It is supposed to transform Palestinian victims of the massive military force unleashed on them by Israel into necessary "collateral damage" in a war against a force as strong and dangerous as Nazism.
Let's be very clear... the huge majority of the "military aged males" killed in Gaza are Hamas militants who met their demise while shooting at the IDF or launching missiles at Israel. The Hamas Health Ministry could easily provide complete clarity and transparency on casualties by providing separate lists of militant and civilian deaths. The Palestinian civilian casualties are tragic but are a bi-product of Hamas using civilians as human shields as they use schools, hospitals, and other buildings as command centers and to launch missiles from. I have outlined multiple times on this thread that the right-wing Netanyahu government does not want peace and only a more moderate government voted into office in Israel can lead to peace and a two-state solution. However Hamas does not want peace either; they have been offered internationally-brokered ceasefire agreements multiple times which they have not accepted and the few times a ceasefire was implemented Hamas ceased to meet their commitments after a short period of time. There is a need to get more food aid into Gaza and the world should pressure Israel to make this happen. However Hamas is a barrier to this as well - the terrorist group has been stealing and re-selling food provided by aid organizations in order to pay their militants. Additionally Hamas has repeatedly threatened to execute anyone accepting food aid from the GHF and now it appears they have followed through on their threats in mass shooting events by masked gunman as seen in multiple drone videos.
The first Jewish anti-Zionist conference is about to be held in Vienna. Over the years, I've had many Jewish friends and acquaintances, few of them Zionist, one or two US reform Jews so Zionist but knowing little about it. When they learn I’m culturally Irish, some make hit-and-run arguments, backpackers, which I have done a lot of. I’ve often been told personal anecdotes: 'my mother just left a café before it blew up.' being a story I’ve heard, or a near-identical version, seven times. That repetition made me skeptical. Later, a Jewish friend explained 'hasbara' to me, and it put those exchanges into context. Truth be damned, anything is permitted to leverage sympathy for Israel. Details about the conference:
You know you can ask Baron to set a permission that prevents him from posting in your thread, right? I can only respond to what's going on with the gravity it deserves, it's like a tombstone. But having him act like a jackass, bad faith pivoting, in the middle of something so serious just feels unseemly. He isn't a Jew, he is a total housecat with no lived experience to speak from, he refuses to examine evidence. He is not a discussion participant, just trying to shove his immature "Ugly American" take down throats with little effort, he has so many threads to attend. Comes to mind somehow
In a way it's advantageous having this troll @gwb-trading spewing his nonsense. Anyone with half a brain can see through the western religion bias of "Judaism/christianity has its roots in God, therefore we are right, we speak the truth". However you'll always get sheeple who want to follow their political and religious leaders with their lies and delusions. So in a way @gwb-trading unbeknown to himself is working for the topic of this thread. Everytime @gwb-trading comes up with more nonsense, all it does is incentivises me and others to continue posting rebutals and with useful new content.